Mumbai, Jun 28 (IANS): For the third consecutive day, Maharashtras Covid-19 cases jumped sharply from Saturday's highest of 5,318 to 5,493 on Sunday while deaths in Pune Division crossed 1,000, health officials said.

The state's fatalities again shot up from the June-lowest of 62 to 156 Sunday, down from the previous one-day highest deaths figure of 248 notched on June 23.

Earlier, on June 16, the state had reported the highest 1,409 fatalities taking into account reconciliation of earlier deaths, which drastically escalated the toll.

With Sunday's 156 fatalities, the state death toll climbed from 7,273 to 7,429 and total cases zoomed to 164,626 till date, both being the highest in the country.

This comes to roughly one death recorded every 9 minutes and a staggering 229 new cases notched every hour in the state.

After 3 days, the recovery rate marginally fell from 52.94 per cent to 52.59 per cent, and the mortality (death) rate stood at 4.51 per cent.

For most days in June, the state has been recording three-digit highs of deaths and since the past three days 5,000 plus figures of new patients, causing worries among the health officials.

The health department said of the total number of cases declared till date, 70,607 are ‘active cases' (ill) Sunday - and this number is lower (favourable) vis-A-vis the number of patients cured, indicating a positive trend.

Of the total 156 fatalities declared Sunday, Mumbai alone notched 87 deaths - pulling up the city's death toll from 4,284 to 4,371 now, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients here shot up by 1,287 cases to touch 75,539.

Besides Mumbai's 87 deaths, there were 26 in Thane, 20 in Pune, 8 in Nashik, 6 in Jalgaon, 4 in Solapur, 1 each in Jalna, Amravati, Yavatmal, Sangli and Ratnagiri.

On the positive side, a total of 2,330 fully cured patients returned home Sunday, taking the number of those discharged to 86,575 now - relatively higher than the 70,607 ‘active cases' currently.

Warning that the Covid-19 crisis continues to loom large, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray made it clear that the lockdown will not cease from June 30, though restrictions would be gradually eased.

Shortly afterward, Mumbai Police came out with a set of guidelines for the city, barring all non-essential travel with the threat of seizure of vehicles, a night curfew from 9 pm-5 am, and other restrictions.

The MMR (Thane Division) remains a tricky issue as deaths and cases shoot up, with a total of 5,412 Covid-19 fatalities and a whopping 3,347 new patients pushing up the number of positive cases to 118,732.

Thane - with 34,257 cases and 845 fatalities - has emerged as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state.

Pune district comes third with 20,870 patients and 714 deaths till now. But Pune Division ranks second (after MMR) with 24,462 patients and fatalities entered four-digits from Saturday's 979 to 1,003 Sunday.

The next major region of concern is Nashik Division with 512 fatalities and 8,431 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad Division with 245 deaths and 5,675 cases, and finally Akola Division with 123 fatalities and 2,588 cases.

Kolhapur Division has notched 51 deaths and 1,944 patients, Latur Division had 42 fatalities and 955 cases, and finally Nagpur Division recorded 17 deaths and 1,765 cases.

Three divisions - Nagpur, Latur and Aurangabad - recorded zero fatalities Sunday, though there were new Covid positive cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home quarantine increased from Saturday's 565,161 to 570,475 now, while those in institutional quarantine decreased from 38,925 to 37,350.